ta-shy's travel reports

Valladolid-- base city for the Yucatan

Landing in Cancun at 4pm I made my way to the bus station where I caught a bus to Valla. After a quick, cheap, 2hr ride I arrived around 7pm. The first thing that blew me away in the Yucatan was the heat and humidity, 38c and 100% humidity wow!

Valla is a relatively small city with alot of history. With Colonial churches- San Servacio; Ceynotes-Zaci, Dzitnup(too much bat guana for my liking), and Samula close to Dzitnup; San Roque Museum; local and tourist markets and quick access (30min) to Chichen Itza, Valla is the perfect place to use as a base. I stayed at El Hostel La Candelaria 2 blocks from Central Park and 3 from the bus station. The hostel is run by a family from Nicaragua, cheap ($7), and a very hospitable place to stay. I found the whole Yucatan area to be very high priced for souviners, in comparison to the rest of Mexico. Around the central park there are many good local restaurants and a Bazaar that serve local food cafeteria style (cheap compared to restaurants). You can also find French, spanish style restaurants ( was dissappointed to see a Domino's Pizza there). Valla has all the amenities you need bank, post, groceries etc. To my knowledge there is no car rental in Valla, one can request a car and it is then brought in from Merida a couple of hrs away (easier to rent around Cancun or Tulum) However, there is really no reason to rent(except for time constraint) buses are fast and reliable. There is a large population of Mayan Indians in the area and it surprised me greatly that the majority of them owned alot of the tourist facilities and markets. There are the regular street vendors of course but the majority of large market entrepreners were Mayan. I find it rare to see an Indigenous people be the majority in contributing to the tourist economy in their country. Ie: I saw very few non-mexican owners in the establishments the big tourist resorts exempted. It was quite interesting to see personally coming from a country where our Indians are suppressed by the majority.

Favourite spots:

Because I found the weather quite unbearable at the time for me, I didn't venture out as much as I liked. I did see the mentioned Ceynotes Zaci being my favorite despite the pathetic zoo they had. Chichen Itza was a favorite (be sure to go on the earliest bus 7am, it is quite hot by 11am and there is little to no shade in the area. Hoardes of tourists come in by the bus load after 9am. If you want to climb the ruin, be sure to do it first when there are little to no tourists.

What's really great:

I enjoyed the Hostel very much, a good place to chill out and relax. I mostly liked people watching though and meandering through out the markets and visiting the different sites.

This is a very interesting report. I have travelled to Valladolid, Chichen Itza, and the surrounding areas on at least 5 occassions. The Yucatan is one of my favorite states in all of Mexico.

Two suggestions that I have could improve your reports:
1. When writing for publication (internet journals are a form of publication), one needs to use proper grammar, spelling, and punctuation. We have many Globos whose primary language is not English. For them, a few errors are understandable. However, for those of us whose primary language is English (and we are writing in English), we need to set the proper tone and write effectively.
2. Pictures. One should always add pictures to illustrate the ideas that we are trying to show. Photographs of the cenotes and of the cathedral and churches would have shown others your idea of the historic colonial heritage of the city.

Overall, this is an interesting report. Keep up the effort and write more soon.